Totem agro

I have some questions about totems and agro, as my guild now and then complains about it.
Last night on Kaz'rogal after wave 8 and Kaz'rogal was on incoming I dropped wrath of air totem to buff the maintank with Eartshield. Then the raid complained about totems taking agro. After raid I found out it was the mana tide totem which should have pulled the agro. All in all a bit confusing, I do not think I had mana tide up, but our other shaman did. But in order to avoid this from happening again I want to know exactly how totems agro work.

Do they draw agro to themselves when cast or to the owner.
Does Mana tide/healing stream totem give agro to itself or the caster when regenerating.
Or do they only pull agro by a body pull.

Totems can draw aggro, but there must be several conditions ...

* The Mob has only "passive" aggro -> Body Pull or Puller is dead
* You cast a new totem and the totem buff someone
* Someone enter the totemrange and receive the totem buff
* Healing Stream heal someone

I consider the following conditions as "safe" ...

* You cast the totems before you enter combat
* No-one enter the totemrange until the mob has "direct" aggro (from damage or heal)
* You can recast totems as long as all group members have the totem buff already "active"
* I never had any problems with Mana Spring as long as all "safe" conditions are true.

But I avoid Healing Stream and Mana Tide before the tank has direct aggro.

As far as I know:
Buffing, restoring mana and healing all generate threat in addition to dealing damage. This is small threat, however, and if a totem pulled aggro it means the mob wasn't picked up. The only way for a totem to pull aggro is same as the only way for a healer to pull aggro - buff/heal someone right as the mobs are running to the tank before he even got a hit on them.

Totems buff which produces a small amount of threat as others have noted. As does returning mana or health (which is why spirest aggro is so high even though they do alot less dmg than many other classes).

Also keep in mind that some totem buffs are not static they pulse. They de/buff at 2 or 5s increments
Totems that pulse:
Tremor
Windfury
Poison / Disease cleasnsing
water spring
healing stream.
stoneclaw

ALso any totems doing dmg produce threat as does the countdown pulses of fire nova totem (its an odd mechanic since it it doing any dmg yet still produces threat. Seems like a stoneclaw effect.)

I don't think decursing produces any threat however I am not completely sure. Tremor, poison cleanse, and disease cleanse fall under the decursing types and I don't think they generate aggro. Someone correct me if I am wrong on this.

The other buffing totems that pulse will generate everytime they pulse and reapply thier respective buff. Windfury is the most common totem to get aggro. Many fights where bosses or mobs randomly target people windfury would get targeted e.g. shade of aran, teron, etc (this mostly seems to be fixed but the point is how they produce threat not that mobs randomly target them).. Before fear mechanic change when aggro would be lost during fear, when the entire raid would be feared pulsing totems would frequently get aggro. I think onyixia destroyed my WF totem every week pre TBC raiding when the raid was feared.

Has anyone seen or done the math to relate %crit to AF uptime?
I was able to determine the chance of refreshing AF before it runs out spaming either a 2.5 sec or a 1.5 sec cast heal but i am not smart enough to relate that to a % of AF uptime as time goes to infinity.

1-(Chance you dont crit)^(number of cast)=chance of criting

This post has some math on the priest talent Inspiration.

This is not true uptime though.
Consider two extremes you have 25 crit heals out of 150 heals with a heal landing every 2.5 secs.

Your AF uptime if the 25 crits happen in a row would be 24*2.5+15=75secs
If you crit every 6th heal you would have 25*15=375secs

edit: Just to be clear your math is right but it does not = uptime
it does = % chance you will refresh AF before it expires

Could a totem do more agro than a misdirect ?

Quite a few times, I had Searing Totems pull aggro during phase transitions with aggro wipe, even against successful Shield Slam hits.

I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, but it seems to fit in the current discussion.

My favourite theory (pure speculation) is that totems aren't affected by global threat wipes and thus have quite a head start.

This theory might be wrong, but it explains my experiences with Searing Totems against Noth, Hydross, Leotheras etc.


Excluding such threat wipes, I don't think it's possible for totems to pull aggro from tanked mobs under realistic circumstances.

Well if that theory is right should it not also count for other totems as well ? I have never seen other totems than searing pain totem pull agro on Hydross and I seldom change their side in time. Do you think it only counts for agressive totems ?

Totems doesnt pull aggro over shield slam or any other ability when warrior time it correctly. Most times they do abilites before new phase has started and then blame totems. The best example for this Illidan P3/4 shift where some do threat while it still is forming a shape (boss going to warlock = warrior fail or miss).

I think it counts for all totems, but the amount of threat buff totems generate is less than a HoT, DoT or something else ticking.


We also initially thought it was a timing issue, but that wouldn't explain Hydross phase change to "water", Hydross targetting the Searing Totem, then a Shield Slam + Heroic Strike hits and still the totem has aggro.

I just spam chain heal until mobs hps reach 0.

You honor your nickname.

Just curious about Searing totem, on an aggro-reset is it pulling arggo after fires and only after it hits, pulling after it fires, pulling while it is casting, or can it pull aggro while doing nothing to the mob that dumped arggo (ie having a Lurker add up and targeting it, when Lurker jumps back up)?

Just wanted to say great work on the guide. It has helped me become a better healer and has taught me a lot about how to gear myself more effectively.

I was reading some posts a few pages back regarding mods that track incoming heals and while Grid does indicate someone is healing a specific target with a little green box, the RDX (Raid Data Exchange) mod can show you who is healing the target, what spell/rank they are using, how much the spell will heal for (approx.) and even when they casted their heal/when the heal is going to land.

For these features to be effective, all of the healers need to be using the mod, just like grid, but being able to see when someone else's heal is going to land in relation to yours can really cut your OH by a significant amount. The mod by itself still provides a powerful raid healing frame supporting single click heals. Also, you can see if enough heals are being juggled on your MT at times when you know they are going to take a lot of spike damage because the mod shows the expected value of all those heals that are being cast on him.

Last night I picked up my second piece of T5 and was wondering where I should stat wise for T5 content. Currently My guild is working on Phase II of Vaj. With 3/4 TK & 5/6 SSC complete. After I gemed and enchanted my new Leggins I am sitting at 1995 Healing and 143 Mp5. Do I need all this healing? Should I regem for More Mp5? Am I fine where I am at?

I have dealt with this pnenomenon before, especially on Hydross. I now recall my totems a couple seconds before transition just to make sure. I have the same assumption as you about the head start theory as it also seems to gain some credence from the Leotheras encounter. There have been other circumstances where my searing totem has pulled aggro but never when the mob is being directly tanked. It is kind of like the mechanism with dot's. It's just imperative that you recall your Searing Totem before the threat wipe as aggro is very touchy for those few short seconds.

That's fine. I personally feel that having +2000 healing is a sign you should be hunting down spell haste gear.

Along these lines, that's kind of the path I'm seeking right now. Being, basically, the only raiding resto shaman we have (we have another resto who can't raid a lot, and one enhancement), my biggest issue is purely HPS and not HPM on Chain Heal friendly fights. We have 2-3 CoH priests which help out a good bit, but I'm starting to piece together a haste set (ZA cloak, chest, mace, shoulders, etc.). Having the [Hex Lord's Voodoo Pauldrons], my current dilemma is if I should spend the gold picking up two hearts of darkness (we're fairly new in MH/BT, so we're still crafting SR with our hearts) for the [Living Earth Shoulders]. Seems like an expensive upgrade for 7 haste and 20 healing, but assuming a shadow priest, the mp5 on the Voodoo Pauldrons is mostly worthless.

I never thought I'd hate having so many choices.

Just starting BT I think you'd want to save those hearts for shadow resist gear. 20 more healing won't likely make a huge impact. if you already have all your shadow resist made and you don't have t6 shoulders (don't plan on using it for your 4pc) then go ahead

I would advise not to craft the shoulders (unless you already bought all your alts their epic mounts and don't know what to do with all your money). It's not a significant upgrade and it looks like there is plenty of haste available in Sunwell.